


first night

by essektheylyss (midnightindigo)



Series: sacris [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Consecuted Mighty Nein, Multi, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22296298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightindigo/pseuds/essektheylyss
Summary: The first life is often the hardest. The first life is the one where you have to make the choice.This is part of what will be a meandering series of vignettes revolving around consecuted Mighty Nein, each over the course of different lifetimes, and what it means to choose people, over and over again.
Relationships: Beauregard & Caduceus Clay & Fjord & Jester Lavorre & Nott & Caleb Widogast & Yasha, Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Series: sacris [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604926
Comments: 19
Kudos: 143





	1. consecration

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, thank God for lore dumps, because I was already writing this and then episode 91 happened and... beautiful. Thanks, Matt. *chef's kiss*
> 
> And I only had to tweak it the smallest amount!

“I wish,” he says one night, after they’ve both been quiet for a while, absorbed in their books, “I wish I knew if it hurt.”

Essek doesn’t have to ask what he means; it isn’t a new topic of discussion for them, only one that has lain dormant due to a lack of answers. Neither of them are willing to ask the questions of those who have gone through lives time and again; they are young and don’t understand, and they know the chasm between them and those who have the answers they seek is too wide. They know they would be told it is something that has to be experienced.

That doesn’t mean Caleb will let it fall to the side entirely; he has a long history of chasing impossible questions and ripping the answers from the universe’s fingers, of analyzing every small detail and demanding to know.

Essek sets his book aside and crosses one leg over the other. “I think it hurts like old memories hurt. That’s all they are, really. Even the memory of dying. Haven’t you died before?”

Caleb can feel the shattered diamond in his chest that has brought him back from the brink of death on more than one occasion. It feels like a phantom remnant, as much a lost part of him as the residuum that he dug out of his arms with dirty fingernails. Even that is a lost vestige of pain, one that tugs on the edge of his memory but that he can’t quite recreate the feeling of.

“I think it hurts more to wake up after,” he says, and realizes with surprise that he has died more times than the drow, who rarely leaves the safety of Rosohna or the routine stress of his job. Essek stares at him intently, absorbing this information he has never thought to share. “It hurts more to remember that there was peace for a moment. Like waking from a pleasant dream.”

“Perhaps there is a lesson there,” Essek says sagely, one long indigo finger pressed over his mouth. He’s leaning forward into the conversation now, both feet on the floor, and Caleb startles, as he often does, to remember that someone cares what he has to say, that Essek is willing to engage in his most fanciful ponderings. “Living is painful, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it anyway.”

Caleb has lived more pain than most, and both of them know it. Now, with the possibility of returning after death, a far more prolonged immortality, he fears what it would be like to dream of a past life in adolescence and only dream of fire. What is in his head terrifies him when he closes his eyes—what would it be like for a young child, who has known nothing but safety? Assuming that is an environment he is reborn into; he can’t be certain of that either. He is a researcher, after all, an academic, and he doesn’t like having this many variables.

Essek knows all of this; they’ve had this conversation before. But he was baptized into this without having known any other path, and in a way, Caleb thinks he might understand even better than the drow what it is to live with the pain of lifetimes. How many names has he already held? How much pain has each of those names contained? “I would like to believe that the universe cares enough about us to impart that kind of wisdom. I fear that there is no meaning, and we are all simply chasing after reasons to go on, even when given the chance to rest.”

Essek sidles off the couch across from him, and rests on his toes on the floor in front of Caleb, their knees pressed together, and takes his hands between his own. “Does that mean those reasons are any less real, that they are only imparted upon ourselves?”

Up until this moment, Caleb would’ve said no, that they were illusions that everyone crafted to keep themselves sane, but maybe handmade motivations for forging onward were as powerful as the spells he had created from only his mind and a little knowledge and what he had on hand. Those had helped him in a pinch, but the reasons he had for living—they had far more staying power.

“How about you?” he asks softly, and makes no move to pull his hands away, though he cannot meet Essek’s eyes. “You will outlive me. You will outlive most of those you grow to care about.”

“And others will outlive me,” Essek says softly. “But most of them… I know I will see again, in the next life. I may yet see you again, in my lifetime. In your next.”


	2. divinity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah we posting chapters back to back keep walking (jk please read and let me know what you think <3)

The moment the opportunity is offered, those of them who are people of… well, varying degrees of faith feel the need to reach out to their respective gods. This is not something to take on lightly, of course, and all of them weigh it appropriately, but if the Kryn are correct, this is another entity, a deity that may or may not harbor animosity toward them for worshipping other gods—and they certainly have no interest in angering the gods they already serve.

Caduceus is the first to reach out to the Wildmother, sitting at the base of the tree on top of the Xhorhaus, crosslegged, and Fjord sits anxiously across from him. The cleric has always had the better attachment to Melora, even as much as Fjord tries to keep faith, but the Wildmother has never begrudged him the effort he’s put in to keep to the light—in fact, he gets the sense that she appreciates him all the more for it, that she recognizes how difficult faith can be, and loves him anyway.

Still, though, Caduceus is the one who has always found it easiest to talk with her, like an old friend, not just an entity he serves.

He lights the incense between them, his eyes closed, and Fjord watches him carefully as he rests the backs of his hands on his knees, palms upward and open, and sometimes Fjord wonders how Melora can reach them through the artificial darkness that he has only rarely seen part over Rosohna. Every time he considers it though, he stares into the branches of their tree, its roiling spread of roots, and he thinks he can see her deep within it. Just a feeling.

That’s faith, he thinks. 

Caduceus asks in that calm, low voice of his, “Will we be rejecting you, if we undergo this Luxon’s ritual of consecution?”

It is not the question Fjord would’ve thought to ask—quite the opposite, in fact. He still feels the sting of fear and anxiety from the grasp of Uk’otoa, and a deep, repressed part of him constantly anticipates the day in which his goddess will do the same. It always feels a little too good to be true, and he is not used to things coming easily.

Her soothing presence comes to them both, with the feeling of grass beneath bare feet and sunshine on bare skin, and it is not so much a voice as it is an answer. 

_“The Luxon is not in opposition to my domain. We are no more alike than you are to the tree you rest under, and yet, you and the trees are made of the same stuff. Are we not all the same matter? It is the form that gives it its shape, and its function. The Luxon and I are the same in the same way that you and the trees are the same.”_

Her presence fades, and Fjord feels as he always does after speaking with her, a melancholy that is only deep, deep in his soul. 

“I don’t know what that means,” he stammers, but Caduceus smiles.

“It means there is no wrong answer to this question. If the answer is not no, then we are free to choose as we wish.”

Fjord almost would’ve preferred she had given them a clear no to the question of consecution—it would’ve been far easier to decide. Still, the reason he serves Melora is because she has never guided his hand in such a way, has not asked anything of them aside for their stewardship of her domain. 

Besides, there would be far more stewardship to be accomplished, if they were made to return.

—

The green cloak of the Traveler catches on the breeze as he alights beside her, where she sits on her bed with her hands folded around her paintbrushes, and she can’t help but shiver as his hand falls on her shoulder, a pleasant weight that she’s always been fond of. 

It is a measure of safety, and it has always carried her well when she needs it. 

“If I go into the beacon,” she says, her voice small, and she doesn’t really look up to meet his eyes, only glances sideways at him and sees the cloak covering most of his face, “will I lose my connection with you?” 

His fingers squeeze her shoulder. “Jester. You will never lose your connection to me, if you choose not to let it go. And I will be there to find you, in this life, and the next, if you choose that as well.”

“I’m worried,” she says carefully, and she doesn’t know why this subject causes her to think through every word that comes out of her mouth, “that if I do that, and I come back, things won’t be the same. Not with you, or with my friends…”

“I cannot speak for your friends,” he answers, his voice matching hers in the softness. “But there will always be chaos to sow. And there will always be a need for joy in the world. They can go hand in hand, and you… you have already done so much to spread both of those things on my behalf. If you choose to return, then you will always have a place with me. And if you do not, well, then,” his smile is the only portion of his face she can see, “you have served me well, and you will have earned your rest, when you go.”

Jester doesn’t know if she wants to go. There is pain in this world—she’s seen it, and she’s experienced it, and she still feels it deep in her soul, where the hurt of loneliness is never far—but there is so much good to be found, too, more and more everyday, and she likes being a part of that.

“What about Momma?” she asks. “How can I… how can I be reborn, and have a different mom, and not feel like I’m abandoning her?”

“Every parent knows their child must leave them eventually,” he says, and leans forward enough that what little of his face she can see is almost obscured. “Most hope they will depart first—not all are so lucky. You have brought your mother as much joy as you have spread to the world, but a good mother will never begrudge their child a longer life than they have. Even in the case of offered reincarnation.”

“Do you think I should ask her about this?” Jester says, and shivers as she thinks about the proposition. She has come so far from her little room at the Lavish Chateau, to the point where she has been offered a chance at immortality, something that is nearly unfathomable as she tries to contemplate it. She can bearly comprehend the infinity she is considering, and she can’t expect her mother, who has so scarcely left the safety of the inn at least since Jester was born, to be able to know what this kind of decision entails. 

The Traveler smiles again, holds her hands in his, and squeezes her fingers tight. “I think you have already made up your mind on that,” he says, and turns to stand. Jester closes her eyes; there is sadness in this choice, even as momentous as it is, and she doesn’t want him to see the tears fall, not after how many times he has caught them for her. 

— 

Yasha’s legs ache from the climb, but she is glad for it.

There is no rain in Rosohna, along with their strange, eternal night, and she set out in the middle of the night to find the edge of it, beyond the city, to climb to the highest peak within fifty miles and see what she might hear.

And the rain is coming down here, torrential, drenching her to the bone. She is glad for it.

The top of the hill is not as high as she’d like, but it is solitary enough for her tastes. She pulls the Magician’s Judge from her back and stabs it, stark upright, into the ground. The hilt trembles from the forces as she lets it go. 

“Storm Lord!” she shouts, certain that no one is within hearing range, and that any sound that might reverberate down the mountain is caught within the heaviness of the storm. “Will you allow me to try again? To do better next time?”

She throws her head back to the sky, and as she does, lightning strikes, feet from her, and thunder echoes over the rolling hillsides, a joyful boom, almost like laughter.

She laughs with it, letting all of the righteous fury of this lifetime wash away in the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part of the series will likely have three more chapters, and then we get into the fun stuff...


	3. matriarch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I did intentionally not specify whether Nott is still a goblin here or not. Will I be specifying in the future? Nope.

It’s harder to accept another life when you know what you’re leaving behind.

The knock at his bedroom door comes so lightly that he almost doesn’t hear it, consumed by his reading as he is. Essek is out of Rosohna on business that he couldn’t speak about, and as many nights as he spends in Essek’s tower, this is still his home, almost a replacement for the childhood home that burned to ash.

Well, perhaps not a replacement, but a different home. 

It’s strange how many homes he has now, for someone who thought he’d destroyed his chances at such things at the age of seventeen. He is as comfortable at Essek’s as he is at the Xhorhaus, as comfortable at the Xhorhaus as he is on the Balleater, almost as comfortable at the Lavish Chateau, which feels rather like visiting a beloved aunt. 

He only half processes the knock, but Frumpkin’s deeper _mrrrrp_ against his knee alerts him to the door opening slowly and Nott’s small face poking inside.

Instantly, he sets the book aside. For anyone else he would find his bookmark, place it carefully between the pages, but for Nott, he leaves it open and upside down without care for the binding. 

She is more important than books, always.

She settles on the foot of the bed, curling her knees into her chest, flowers braided into her hair by Yasha earlier in the day. She’ll speak when she’s ready, and he waits for a long moment, sending Frumpkin to make circle eights around her feet where they are tucked on the bed. “I don’t know about this, Caleb,” she says, and he leans forward, scooting across the bed to meet her. “I would have to live here, and… I don’t want to drag my family all the way out here. I don’t think they would like it at all. How can I explain to Yeza that… I have a shot at immortality and I can’t take him with me?”

She’d made the conscious decision not to tell Yeza about the offer of consecution yet; it was certainly something he needed to know about, but it was hard enough to wrap her own head around it, let alone try to explain it to someone else. 

Caleb wraps his palms around her fumbling fingers, and the tremble in her shoulders calmed a little.

“Perhaps you need to see how he feels about it,” he says gently, “whether or not you think he will have the reaction you are hoping for.”

“It just seems… it seems like it would be silly not to accept it. But it also seems so incredibly selfish to accept it. And I don’t know which is the stronger impulse.”

He likes to believe he has the answer to every question, and if he doesn’t, that he can find it, or create it. But this is not his question to answer. This is his friend, deciding her fate—forever. And it has to be up to her.

“Yeza is a smart man,” he says, and squeezes her fingers tightly. “He is smart, and understanding, and he has known you far longer than I have. And sure, you are very different now. But you are still the same, in all the ways that matter.”

“I’m scared to talk to him,” she admits, tucking her knees tightly to her. Frumpkin curls up on her toes, purring into her ankles, and she pets him absent-mindedly. “I’m scared to admit that I’m considering something that takes me somewhere… where he can’t follow. Luc can’t follow.” Her eyes are wide and shining as she finally meets Caleb’s eyes. “Does that make me an awful mother? That I’m even considering this?”

He tries to hide the disbelief in his puff of laughter, but he blinks at her with all of the fondness that he has ever had for her and murmurs, “Most mothers have not done half of what you have in order to return to their children. I don’t think you are an awful mother. I don’t think Yeza believes you are an awful mother. You are doing as much as you can with the hand you have been dealt.”

“We haven’t been dealt kind hands, have we?” she answers, voice as quiet as his, and he wraps her into a hug, fingers still intertwined.

“No, we haven’t. But we have done what we can, ja?” She sniffles, the tears finally falling from her wide eyes, and she presses her face to his shoulder, wetting the fabric of his shirt and crumpling the wildflowers that Yasha placed in her braids. If he could answer this question for her, he would in a heartbeat, but the only support he can offer is this: a warm hug and soft hands and solace away from any prying, judgmental eyes. “That is enough. That is enough.”


	4. doctrine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know elves trance for four hours and that's all the rest they need but you can rip cute sleep tropes from my cold dead hands.

There is no archive of the Cobalt Soul in Rosohna. 

Though there is plenty to learn there, their secrets are carefully guarded, even to those who have been tentatively accepted into the fold, so accessing the libraries is often difficult and expensive, when possible.

It is fortunate for Caleb and Beau, then, that Essek has one of the most extensive personal libraries in the Dynasty, that his academic interests span much wider than the vast majority of the Kryn.

That is where they spend many quiet afternoons between adventures and quests, researching whatever new items arose on their to-do list, finding that Essek had useful books on a surprising number of subjects. Besides, it's as quiet or as loud as they want it to be, without other people to distract or annoy, and there is far comfier furniture in which to read.

In particular, one chaise lounge is large enough for Caleb to sit upright tucked into the corner, with Essek sprawled across his lap, both completely engrossed in their own books. Beau makes a point to pretend to gag at least once every time they sit like that in her presence, but at this point it’s more of an obligatory, younger sibling-esque reaction—the Mighty Nein has spent far too many nights curled up in a ten-foot bubble for her to convince Caleb that she's actually disgusted.

And she quietly sits across from them in the main study, stretched out on the sofa, usually in some strange stretch that she insists feels great on her sore muscles. If anyone else had entered the room on one of those afternoons, they’d have looked crazy, but it is strangely comforting for all three of them to be in a place where no one expects anything of them, not even really each other.

But there are some afternoons when one of them is distracted and restless, and the others wait patiently until they bring themselves to speak. None of the three of them is quick to share their thoughts, preferring to puzzle out what it is that they’re thinking first, and it is understood that when that person does decide to speak, the others listen if needed.

Today, Beau has been reading the same page about a meteor strike in the western region of Wildemount for the past half hour, sighing heavily out of her nose every so often in the meantime, and Caleb is waiting for her to speak.

Essek, today, is barely reading either. When they’d returned with too many bruises between the two of them, he had looked as exhausted as they were, and he’s nearly asleep on Caleb’s stomach, his book resting against the cushion. In fact, Caleb isn’t entirely certain he’s not asleep, the rise and fall of his breath too steady and slow, and he wishes he had the time to fall into unconsciousness with him, but the foes they are chasing are moving too quickly not to get this research done today.

Not that, between the sleepy elf in his lap and the distracted monk across the room, he is focusing particularly well either. 

Beau sighs again and opens her mouth, then closes it again, and he wants to wait for her to sort her thoughts out, but neither of them are getting anything done. 

He pulls a fragment of paper from his pocket and slots it into the book to mark his page before setting it aside. Beau hasn’t looked at him yet, but her eyes are now focused on a point across the room rather than trying to finish her page, and she purses her lips. 

“It’s not the meteors,” she says lowly, and Caleb thinks she must also know that Essek has fallen asleep, the way her voice barely carries. 

“What is it, then?” he asks, matching her tone. 

“Consecution,” she says. “Is it… is it a good thing?”

Caleb looks down at Essek curled in his lap. He has barely aged since they met, but Caleb can feel years beginning to weigh on him. It would be easier if they aged at the same pace, and Caleb has the magic to make that happen, but he can’t help but find himself hoping he doesn’t grow old in this body; that he dies in battle in the Dynasty and grows again in a body that is his, not one that he has to construct for himself. Even now that he’s seen his own spellwork in action, he cannot quite believe that the magic of his mind will hold.

It’s foolishness, he knows, but that magic is not tested longterm; he cannot be sure that that kind of aging process will carry over with such a drastic change, from human to elf. 

Besides, this body bears all the marks of his experience, the scars that have now faded, that he now wears on display most of the time. It has been a while since he has felt the need to wrap his arms. This is the experience he has earned in this lifetime; he will only allow himself a fresh start in the next.

“What do you mean?” he asks, meeting her sharp gaze and then peering down into his rough, worn palms. Essek must be as unconscious as he ever gets by now; his fingers are slack around the binding of his book. Caleb’s fingers trail gently through his hair, light enough so as not to wake him. 

“It’s just… we’re so tired, Caleb, all of us. You’ve noticed. How long have we been running ourselves into the ground? How long has Essek been running himself into the ground? Isn’t death supposed to be the reward? Finally get some fucking sleep?”

Caleb leans his head against the seat back. She’s not wrong; he can feel the exhaustion, a familiar companion now, deep in his bones as though it has a pincer hold on him.

Will that reset too, if he were to be reborn? Or will it sink in again when his memories return to him, an ever-present parasite following him across lifetimes?

He doesn’t know. 

“We have always sought a way to change the world, Beauregard,” he exhales. “Is that not more important than ourselves?”

“Maybe,” she shrugs. “I don’t fucking know. No one knows. Why is it us though? Why can’t we let it be someone else for a change?”

“You seemed very gung ho about this until today,” he says, staring at her sideways, and she meets his eye, one bare heel hooked unceremoniously over the back of the sofa without care for the upholstery. 

“I don’t know, man,” she groans, sliding further downward into the cushions. “First time they even mentioned it I thought, huh. That’d be cool. More time to get more knowledge. I’m a monk of Ioun. Knowledge is power, right? But… is that really the point?”

Ah. This is getting dangerously religious for Caleb’s tastes, but he’ll entertain the notion coming from her. They’ve always been on similar pages with religion, which is also, coincidentally, why they’ve always gotten along so well with Essek. “Perhaps you should take it up with your goddess,” he suggests, half-joking, and she snorts. 

“Ioun doesn’t talk to me,” she shrugs, glancing down at the edges of her book, eyes skimming absently across its corners, and he wonders what that really means to her. “I don’t know, I just wonder… why us? Why do we deserve this? What the fuck have we actually done?”

“We are, you know, renowned diplomats. Heroes of the Dynasty,” he reminds her, but the words are rote, and he doesn’t think he really has an answer to that that means anything to them.

They have never cared what the world thinks of them, how the rest of society judges and evaluates them, and he doubts even immortality can change that. 

“It feels like a reward,” she says, “but like, one that’s just a punishment in disguise.”

“Have you ever thought that immortality doesn’t mean we have to do anything?” She doesn’t look over at him, but that’s okay. She knows that he’s peering intently at her; he can’t let go of the intensity in his voice or his eyes when he’s really trying to hammer home a point. “What obligations do we have to continue to do all of this when we return?”

“Do you think any of us know when to quit?” Her eyebrows rise, incredulous. “I don’t think that changes on a second life, or a seventh. I don’t wanna come back as an elf or something and then proceed to completely burn myself out over and over for a thousand years. Not in some misguided pursuit of knowledge, not because of some goddamned savior complex. I don’t wanna be a hundred and forty years old and passed out at three in the afternoon in the middle of a book.”

She gestures to Essek, and Caleb can’t help but silently agree with her, as much as he’ll never say it to the elf out loud. He would pull him away from this life if he could, but Essek’s sense of duty, even to causes that he’s long since lost interest in, has outlasted any self-preservation. 

But then, Essek would just as soon point out that Caleb has a death wish, going on adventure after adventure, tussling with foes larger and more powerful than any magic he has at his disposal. That staying put in Rosohna in a comfortable if emotionally demanding job keeps him from the worst dangers he might find himself facing, dangers that Caleb and the rest of the Nein run toward.

They’re all laughing in the face of oblivion—their methods just tend to differ.

“I’ll tell you what, Beauregard,” he says, and sits up just a little, not enough to disturb Essek’s rest, but enough to face his friend head-on now. She rolls over to look at him, but doesn’t match his posture. “You and me, we have kept each other in check, more or less, for a long time, ja? We do the same in the next life. We call each other out when we start to lose ourselves again. We pull each other from our most dangerous impulses, as we have always done.”

She glares at him, but the harshness doesn’t extend to the rest of her body. In fact, her shoulders soften a little, and she picks up her book again, opening it up to read, curled up as she is. “Who says I’ll hang out with you in the next life? Who’s to say I’ll even like you in the next life?”

He smiles. “Do you like me in this life, Beauregard?”

She makes a noncommittal noise. He opens his own book again, not sure that that’s the end of it, but after a minute, she turns the page.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm gonna be starting the second work in the series tomorrow, but will likely not post the last chapter of this one yet, dor a mechanical reason, that'll be explained later! *finger guns*
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! Life number 2 is... already getting interesting...

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
